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Found Quotation
Last week’s DOL elevator poster.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Thanksgiving Week Sequencing Gift (and Kidney Loop)
My students this fall and those of you following the blog know that I have been teaching the basic Anusara physical principles of alignment in sequence as the focus of my weekly classes. I did not set out to do so at the beginning of the session, nor did I pick it just for this week, but it just so happens that using my session theme and sequence brings us to “kidney loop” for the Thanksgiving week.
John Friend’s Anusara Teacher Training Manual explains that kidney loop starts in the core of the abdomen, just below the navel. It flows up the back body to fill and open the kidney area to the bottom of the shoulder blades, moves forward through the top of the diaphragm (heart focal point) to the base of the sternum, and then down the solar plexus to just below the navel. The act of opening the back body at our core before engaging the front body helps enhance and refine the physical aspects of the fundamental Anusara alignment principle of “opening to grace.” By opening the back body, we open to the unknown, to that which is greater than ourselves, to untapped sources of power. Opening in this way, draws in and strengthens the front body and helps us find our own inner power.
Among other things for me to give thanks is the very beauty of this magical sequencing moment: What better way to celebrate and honor the tradition of Thanksgiving than by recognizing that we are not fully in charge, by opening in such a way that we are not hardening, demanding, or constricting ourselves, but rather are seeking an opening of the spirit that can bring us to a place of recognition and empowerment.
State of the Front Garden
The baby from the back garden 30-year old rose bush, blooming in the front (in a relatively shady place)!
Hoping for Bats
It was, I think, after having been eaten nearly alive when painting the exterior of my house, that my handyman asked me whether I wanted him to put up a bat house. “Oh yes,” was my enthusiastic response. “I love bats.” The bat house is up. I hope against hope that some bats will make their way into my little yard in an inner city alley and come to feast on the mosquitoes. I am not holding my breath, but anything can happen. One day, a couple of years ago, a hummingbird appeared out of no where to hover in my garden.
Praying Mantis (and pausing to make offering)
This morning as I approached my office, I noticed in the middle of a wide patch of sidewalk that is flanked by the street on one side and a brick building on the other, with no tree boxes or other plantings for several yards in any direction, a praying mantis stranded in the middle. I wondered how it had gotten there and worried that it would not survive if it was just stuck in a sea of concrete.
I crouched and put out my finger. The praying mantis crawled on to my hand. I did not have time to go all the way back to the park next to the Capitol or to the nearest “island” with trees, but I took it to the nearest tree box, certain that there would be enough mosquitoes for it to eat well. When I placed my hand next to the bush in the tree box and helped the praying mantis move onto the greenery, it first came back onto my hand again. So I talked to it (as if it understood English) and encouraged it to get onto a branch (yes, I was getting some strange looks from passers by at this point). I watched as the praying mantis eventually turned around and started moving into the denser foliage.
With this act, did I make anything in the world better except give myself the joy of interacting with a wonderful being? Does it matter?
